Making a Great Exhibition

Aiming to explain how an art exhibition comes to be, Globus starts with the art’s creation, introducing Viola, a brown-skinned sculptor who “makes art of rock, marble, metal, and clay,” and Sebastian, a tan-skinned painter of “shapes and lines on canvases of all sizes.” Globus is particularly good at explaining these imagined creators’ processes: Viola “finds forms like circles, swirls, and lines in nature and makes them into something brand new.” But the actual organizing impulse of an exhibition—usually centered in curatorial thinking and development-office needs—is obscured by a flurry of democratically mentioned roles, from a lighting designer to an event coordinator and a museum guard (readers don’t meet the museum’s curator until after the art pieces arrive). Blake’s hip illustrations employ blocky, crisp shapes in saturated color, with captions and labels identifying objects and processes. Visual Easter eggs for arty adults, such as a mini depiction of Donald Judd’s Writings, conjure a certain in-the-know art-world cool. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)